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Friday, February 10, 2012

Nursing Nurses? Outrageous!

Just a few days ago, I could not help but shake my head when I read this news:

THE latest government statistics show that in 2010, more than 54% of private nursing diploma graduates were not able to find work three to four months after graduating, compared to only 21.7% in 2008.

In that same year, there were 37,702 students enrolled in nursing diploma courses in 61 private institutions of higher learning (IPTS). Each year, some 12,000 will exit into the marketplace but the demand for new nurses in the private sector is only about 1,500 a year.

And if you think it is easier for them to get a job in the public sector, the Health Ministry only hired 438 of these diploma holders in 2010, as it draws its bulk of nurses from public institutions of higher learning.

When it comes to passing the Nursing Board examination, the private sector candidates, though more in numbers, have a lower passing rate.

The conclusion one arrives at from these statistics is that there is a gross mismatch between supply and demand. But that is not the complete picture.

PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry is working on creating vacancies at government hospitals to absorb the large number of unemployed graduate nurses.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said a special committee, led by Health director-general Datuk Seri Dr Hasan Abdul Rahman, had been set up to find a solution to the issue.

“We are working on a programme to promote those who are already in the system and the vacancies can then be filled up by the graduates,” he said yesterday.

Liow pointed out that the proposed programme aimed to train the current crop of nurses to specialise in one of the many fields in government hospitals and in the process, create vacancies in lower-level positions.

This basically means that you and I (at least, those of us who pay Malaysian taxes) are paying for their lack of employability. One has got to ask, why do so many people want to become nurses, when they should know that the demand for nurses is not there? Somewhere, somehow, the incentive structure has gone wrong. By no means do nurses earn a high pay. So the only possible explanation is that it is easy to obtain a nursing degree. I am not saying that it is easy to be a nurse. I am just saying that it is way too easy to get a degree in nursing.

Why? Well, the question to ask is, why don't these people want to become actuaries? I believe actuaries sure as heck earn a lot more than nurses. There is probably excess demand for actuaries compared with the supply. The question is of course, rhetorical. Graduating with a degree in actuarial science is hard.

In contrast, graduating with a nursing degree, most likely, not as difficult. So why should regular Malaysian taxpayers like you and me be paying for these people who have chosen the "easy" way out. They should have probably worked harder to get more useful and employable skills in order to earn a proper living instead of having to rely on handouts by the Ministry of Health, which are actually Malaysian taxpayers' hard earned money. This is simply another example of the shameless attitude among Malaysians that demonstrate the impracticality of the ETP in "transforming" the country. For more examples, read here and here and here and here.